Tolkien Through Russian Eyes examines the sociological impact of the translation and publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's works in post-Soviet Russia. After 70 years of obligatory State atheism, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian society began actively seeking new sets of spiritual values. The Christian-like doctrine of Tolkienism has attracted a substantial following. During the Soviet era, The Lord of the Rings was a banned book, which was translated independently by a number of underground translators. The result of this is that there are numerous contemporary published translations competing with each other for the reader's attention. There are 10 translations of The Lord of the Rings; 9 translations of The Hobbit and 6 translations of The Silmarillion. Each translator has a slightly different approach to the text. Each translation has a slightly different interpretation of Tolkien. Each translator has a different story to tell. Most of the existing translations are only Tolkienesque, they are not really Tolkienian. They have been adapted to the Russian mental climate. This book relates the history of the publication of Tolkien's works; examines the philosophical distortions introduced by the competing translations, attempts to explain their origins and how they will be perceived by the Russian reader. No knowledge of Russian is necessary. Mr. Hooker's articles on Tolkien have been published in the specialist periodical press in English, in Dutch and in Russian. The results of his research have been presented at a number of conferences, both in the United States and in Holland.

Source criticism--analysis of a writer's source material--has emerged as one of the most popular approaches in exploring the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Since Tolkien drew from many disparate sources, an understanding of these sources, as well as how and why he incorporated them, can enhance readers' appreciation. This set of new essays by leading Tolkien scholars describes the theory and methodology for proper source criticism and provides practical demonstrations of the approach.

Includes a new "boreword" by the author.

From governesses with supernatural powers to motor-car obsessed amphibians, the iconic images of English children's literature helped shape the view of the nation around the world. But, as Translating England into Russian reveals, Russian translators did not always present the same picture of Englishness that had been painted by authors. In this book, Elena Goodwin explores Russian translations of classic English children's literature, considering how representations of Englishness depended on state ideology and reflected the shifting nature of Russia's political and cultural climate. As Soviet censorship policy imposed restrictions on what and how to translate, this book examines how translation dealt with and built bridges between cultures in a restricted environment in order to represent images of England. Through analysing the Soviet and post-Soviet translations of Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne and P. L. Travers, this book connects the concepts of society, ideology and translation to trace the role of translation through a time of transformation in Russian society. Making use of previously unpublished archival material, Goodwin provides the first analysis of the role of translated English children's literature in modern Russian history and offers fresh insight into Anglo-Russian relations from the Russian Revolution to the present day. This ground-breaking book is therefore a vital resource for scholars of Russian history and literary translation.

Soviet Self-Hatred examines the imaginary Russian identities that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Eliot Borenstein shows how these identities are best understood as balanced on a simple axis between pride and shame, shifting in response to Russia's standing in the global community, its anxieties about internal dissension and foreign threats, and its stark socioeconomic inequalities. Through close readings of Russian fiction, films, jokes, songs, fan culture, and Internet memes, Borenstein identifies and analyzes four distinct types with which Russians identify or project onto others. They are the sovok (the Soviet yokel); the New Russian (the despised, ridiculous nouveau riche), the vatnik (the belligerent, jingoistic patriot), and the Orc (the ultraviolent savage derived from a deliberate misreading of Tolkien's epic). Through these contested identities, Soviet Self-Hatred shows how stories people tell about themselves can, tragically, become the stories that others are forced to live.

Tolkien and Welsh provides an overview of J.R.R.Tolkien's use of Welsh in his Legendarium, ranging from the obvious (Gwynfa-the Welsh word for Paradise), to the apparent (Took-a Welsh surname), to the veiled (Gerontius-the Latinizaton of a royal Welsh name), to the hidden (Goldberry-the English calque of a Welsh theonym). Though it is a book by a linguist, it was written for the non-linguist with the goal of making the topic accessible. The unavoidable jargon is explained in a glossary, and the narrative presents an overview of how Welsh influenced Tolkien's story line, as well as his synthetic languages Quenya and Sindarin. The study is based on specific examples of attested names, placed in the context of their linguistic and cultural background, while highlighting the peculiar features of Welsh, "the senior language of the men of Britain" (MC 189), that Tolkien found so intriguing. It supplements, rather than competes with Carl Phelpstead's excellent Tolkien and Wales, which sidestepped the topic of the Celtic linguistics behind Tolkien's work. Learn the story behind Lithe, Buckland, Anduin, and Baranduin. Pagination: xxx + 274, B&W illustrations by James Dunning, maps, Index, Trade Paper Jason Fisher--the editor of Tolkien and the Study of His Sources (McFarland, 2011), and the host of the blog 'Lingwë: Musings of a Fish' -- says: Tolkien and Welsh "should be pretty accessible to most readers." Mark gets "into some of the particulars of Welsh (and Sindarin) phonology--especially on the matter of mutation, a prominent feature of both languages--but Mark writes primarily for the lay person." Where Carl Phelpstead's book Tolkien and Wales "presents a broad survey of the forest as a whole, Mark's book is down at the level of the trees within it, even single leaves, grappling with individual words and names. If you are familiar with his previous books, it is much like those, but with the driving thread being the influence of Welsh on Tolkien's nomenclature and storytelling. I think Mark's book and Carl's complement each other and could be profitably read together." Tolkien and Welsh has been invited to enter the 2013 Competition for the Literature Wales Book of the Year Award. Participation is by invitation only. Despite the fact that the "Preface" explicitly advises the reader that: "The focus is on sources that were current at the time in which Tolkien lived and wrote. Modern theories may have supplanted the theories of Tolkien's time, but that is irrelevant. This volume explores the question of what Tolkien thought, not what we think we know now." some reviewers surprisingly fault Tolkien and Welsh for citing sources that present views that might not be supported by modern scholarship.